Ahmedinejad's rant and what it means

The footage of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad haranguing a Geneva assembly hall is already becoming the iconic image of the latest international conference on racism. His speech sent Western diplomats scurrying for the exits in an effort to disassociate themselves from denials of the Holocaust. The immediate question is how far the United States overreacts to this unfortunate, but isolated, incident. The larger issue for Washington is how to navigate the terrain of international human rights that the Obama Administration says it wants to reclaim.

A lot of hard diplomatic work went into making sure that this week’s Geneva conference on racism did not go off the rails. More than seven years ago, the genuine accomplishments of a previous UN conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, sank into obscurity after some non-governmental organizations made anti-Semitic statements, and the international media could seemingly focus on nothing else. Early negotiations on this round did not look promising, either, and the Bush Administration effectively dropped out months ago in protest.

But wonder of wonders, the document that has been agreed in Geneva isn’t half bad. It contains no reference to Israel or the Middle East and rejects the dangerous concept that religions, as opposed to individuals, can be defamed or have their rights violated (a provision that many Islamic countries were backing). The document also reaffirms the tragedy of the Holocaust and condemns anti-Semitism.

So, now that it has won virtually all the concessions that it was seeking, what should the US do? Having refused on the basis of concrete objections to participate, Washington can hardly keep refusing to participate once those objections are met. Or can it?

Enter Mr. Ahmedinejad, a Midas with a radioactive touch. His anti-Israel comments actually received precious little support in the hall, and did not succeed in changing a single comma in the conference’s final document. The Norwegian Foreign Minister got it right when he urged conference participants to “not accept that the odd man out hijacks the collective efforts of the many.” And yet White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted that Ahmedinejad’s speech has showed that the Administration “made the right decision to not go forward with attendance.”

Right-wing bloggers are eagerly linking this latest dust-up to US participation at the United Nations Human Rights Council, where repressive governments are trying to keep a focus on Israel, not least in order to keep the focus off themselves. A deplorable development indeed. But is it an argument for the United States to disengage, or to re-engage? Diplomats from countries with very poor human rights records grow bolder in direct proportion to the waning of diplomatic energy from governments who are serious about human rights protection.

Barack Obama has vowed to break that cycle and become full participants at the United Nations. Renouncing torture and vowing to close Guantanamo Bay within a year were critical first steps toward engagement, and they have made it likely that the US will win a seat on the Human Rights Council again next month. If Obama is serious (and intellectually consistent) the US government should endorse the conference’s final document. Twenty-two of the countries who walked out of the Iranian president’s speech have already done so. That would demonstrate that the Obama Administration is making human rights policy on the merits -- and not letting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad do it for them.